


unasked

by Alias (anafabula)



Series: the wanting comes in waves [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (It is not helpful or healthy for Martin that the tape recorders like him.), Additional Warnings in Chapter Notes, Background Canon-Typical Horror, Banned Together Bingo 2020, Begging, Body Horror (in statement), Canon Asexual Character, Coming Untouched, Do you like… mind fuck? Do you like… the utter absence of regular fuck?, Eldritch Voyeurism, I don't think I could write Jon allistic if I wanted to and also I do not want to, I wouldn’t know if allo people would handle this sort of thing better, Internalized Aphobia, Is this what happens if the Eye masturbates? Is that secretly our hypothetical here?, Jon trying to distract himself from the apocalyptic horny with self-loathing is a general theme here, Kissing, M/M, Mild drizzle of angst, Okay maybe there’s more angst than expected, Other, Overstimulation, Self-Mutilation (in statement), Sensory Overload, Sexual Fantasy, Size Kink, Spoilers through MAG161 Dwelling or so, Squirting, The tape recorders like Martin! Aww!, Trans Male Character, Unintentionally Sexy Cuddling, Unsolicited Psychic Orgasms, You know. Ambient Eyepocalypse. That sort of thing, but Jon sure is deeply unqualified to try, but make it primarily metaphorical, unwanted arousal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:27:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23343955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anafabula/pseuds/Alias
Summary: He’s never had an orgasm like that before. Never feltanythinglike that before — not while he was conscious, certainly — not that he’d ever have wanted to, but…Kinkmeme prompt: ‘What if by “feels right”, Jon meant that every time the Eye pushes horrid apocalypse visions into him, he has powerful spontaneous orgasms?’
Relationships: Beholding/Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: the wanting comes in waves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730722
Comments: 50
Kudos: 198
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020, Rusty Kink





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some chapters have additional warnings in the notes.
> 
> I said [it consumed me](https://rusty-kink.dreamwidth.org/1380.html?thread=393828#cmt393828) and I meant what I said  
>    
>  "Cunt" and "clit" are the main words being used for what Jon has in his pants ~~on the relatively rare occasion his narration's that explicit about it, honestly~~ , btw

At best, it’s still on par with his first year on testosterone. At _best_ , and that had driven him to distraction at the time. He’d hated that baseline drone of pointless arousal, the intense awareness of seams and even slight casual movement dragging against swollen, oversensitive flesh in ways he’d never had a reason to learn to ignore. Except then he _had_ learned, he’d gotten over it, just a physical reaction — however awful — he’d outgrown the same as anyone else, with as little humiliated involuntary squirming on public transport as he could manage. 

Now that’s the closest he gets to something like normal. As if there weren’t quite enough to be dragging at the edges of his attention without all this. 

The first time it happens, Martin’s not in a position to notice, by sheer coincidence. Jon needed to be— alone, after, breathless and overstimulated with revelation and confusion and the overwhelming awareness of guilt. And, the irony of it aside, that’s something Martin understands. So he’s not there to see when Jon stops pacing, stops breathing, hands still at his temples because he couldn’t bring himself to cover his eyes but gone slack and still. 

The only thing he knows at this scale, at least consciously, is agony, to the point where some small optimistic part of him still tries to parse the rush of hot, intense sensation as pain. 

Strictly speaking, he’s not even wrong. It is pain — other people’s, God, so _many_ other people, more than he could just count, the way the desperate unmeetable need for an end to a fate worse than death means something both unique and identically fruitless for each of them. Some know it’s just beginning and others can’t make sense of anything and still others already coherently want to die and they’re all _afraid_ , and it’s only going to get so much worse— 

He only Knows in the coherent sense what happened (what he _did_ ) to the town below, but he can feel on a less countable level how that’s an infinitesimal fraction of the world that’s ripped open and bared to him— the fear doesn’t leave room in his mind for anything that could just be him, the sheer seething potential doesn’t leave room in his _skin_. Unfamiliar warmth cores through him, the visceral pleasures of individual suffering yielding to a single point of hot bright light; and Jon comes, is coming, wound so tight with sensation that his muscles ache, spasming and gasping as his nerves flare like they’ve had an unmet purpose all along and this was it, the experience so brutal and unfamiliar he almost can’t tell that he had been the entire time. 

He’s never had an orgasm like that before. Never felt _anything_ like that before — not while he was conscious, certainly — not that he’d ever have wanted to, but… 

Hitting the floor with all his weight on his knees is almost a relief. Shocks him back to reality — though that _was_ reality, wasn’t it? Infinitely more real than the flimsy little reprieve he’s pretending could still surround him, and his, all his, all his fault — or, at least, to something roughly the size of himself. Something that feels weak and wrung out and not quite miserable enough to make the new memory of ecstasy burning in his gut disappear. 

Martin’s rapping on the door. 

Barely restraining himself from either actually pounding it or just throwing it open, sounds like. His voice is shaking, which is really to be expected. “Jon? Should— Should I come in?” 

“No,” Jon rasps immediately. (He didn’t make noise when— just now, he doesn’t think; but it’s not like he hadn’t been put to hard use earlier, and his mouth is so dry.) “I. I’m fine now,” he adds. It doesn’t sound particularly convincing. “It’s… over. I think.” 

“O— Okay?” Martin doesn’t sound particularity convinced, either. “What’s over?” 

Jon doesn’t outright panic, trying to think of something he could bring himself to say that would also be true, but it’s a near enough thing. “I, I had a… vision?” he hedges. “Of the— of—” _You should’ve bloody expected something like this,_ he thinks, abrupt and mean enough that he can’t even tell which of them he’s unreasonably resenting. “Outside.” 

“Oh.” Martin shifts his weight to lean against the door. (Jon doesn’t deserve the kind of sympathy he can hear in that single syllable, he thinks. Not for this, or in general. But if Martin also accepted that partial explanation what could Jon possibly tell him _now_?) “That’s… I’m sorry. That’s awful.” 

He swallows. “I’ll, I’ll come out as soon as I’m—” he volunteers instead of agreeing, and then positively kicks himself. What’s Jon supposed to end that sentence with, _a better facsimile of human_? 

“It’s okay,” Martin says for him. It’s not, and he doesn’t sound as resolute against it as Jon thinks belongs in that script. Maybe he never will again. “It’s okay. I’ll be here.” 

* * *

So that’s the first time. 

* * *

The second happens before he can bring himself to face Martin again. Jon doesn’t rightly know if the episode lasts a bit longer or if he just knows what to expect already, the ability to ignore how it builds stolen from him by that lack of confusion. He's oddly comfortable at first, too exhausted to mind much of anything and more physically forgiving just by dint of that post-orgasmic lassitude, the loss of his characteristic tension leaving him almost melting into the floor. Maybe it'll begin to bother him soon that, instead of the way more mundane sexual frustration used to give up and dissipate entirely, he still feels _conscious_ of it, the awareness of his body disproportionately including a focus on still feeling warm and wet and sensitized between his legs that doesn't even slightly manage to be disgust.

He's too wrung out for that now, though, for much of anything other than trying to calm down and reorientate himself enough for that to matter without it meaning thinking _outside_ himself enough to (not) help, which would be a tall order at significantly better times than… this, and right now consists of being aware of how little he can dissociate at all and not much else. 

Almost seductive pressure, though, from the air itself, a subtle enough sensory experience at first that it's a tiny active battle to realize he can't _hear_ as in muffled but not fully suppressed by the windows, that's just his mind trying to make this level of baseline awareness make sense and then keep it under his radar for long enough for Jon to let it in. He tries to only be an almost-human body instead. He _does_. But that just means more knowing when that almost-too-good-to-be-true Knowing gets the better of him after all, removing his willful ignorance as an option. 

And the-- outside perspective really does seem to be inextricable from the now-unmistakable pleasure rippling through him again, quickly overwhelming him between breaths. It's both a full-body thing -- nothing of him being exempt, from the prickling sensitivity of his lips to warmth that lances down to his fingertips to the way his thighs tense and, even lying down, his knees feel so weak -- and uniquely, unmistakably _focused_ on his cunt, the rest of his body subordinated into echoes and refraction. Is that where and why he feels insatiably, overwhelmingly full? Is there any way he _doesn't_ , when that's part of what feels this good, the hollowness he exists around in every way instead stretched and filled and somehow, he knows, simultaneously already overwhelmed and always ready to take more? 

(Was it like this the first time?) 

Every wave is close to being an orgasm in and of itself, and any concept of resistance is almost instantly unreachable. Even awareness _of_ his body as a separate experience is somewhat tenuous when sight and climax _feel_ inextricable if not just synonymous. 

It's flashes he's worse at getting anything more than generalities out of, this time; something about napalm -- about family -- about the circulatory system hardening into calcified wood and then the drag when that _catches_ \-- but the sense of upheaval in progress to contrast with what he's just Known, and throughout it all, always, the fear, fear that makes his mouth open and his toes curl and lifts his hips from the floor. Fear new to him, such that it's almost incomprehensible to feel that it might also be _enough_ if only he took more of it but at the same time there's so much he barely even understands as there to _take--_

Maybe he's paying attention the whole time after not deluding himself about what the thrumming feeling behind his eyes and the rapid curl of heat and awareness from spine to hip. Maybe it feels like he's shuddering interminably when his body does lock up tight and desperate (though hardly the same genre of desperation as, say, someone who is staring down at the hands they just barely know to be their own as the palms split and the flesh begins to slough away from the bone and--) _because_ he expects it to end and simultaneously is too overwhelmed to think past the current split second. Maybe he does only feel like that was _more_ because he's thinking of it as something to come back from despite his breath still ragged and uneven and his clit palpably _twitching_ with the odd mundanely physical aftershock, perspective warped by impatience. Maybe. Probably that's a more reasonable outcome than it being longer, harder, _more_ already. 

He tries not to think about not knowing when it'll happen again, about giving up on _if_ , about the hazy allure of speculation as far as what it _would_ mean if it _does_ build on itself. Tries to remember to hate it. In time to face Martin, if nothing else, for God's sake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: _It gets worse, of course._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll post it as chapters, that's a reasonable response to the draft exceeding 5k," I said. "The second chapter is the one I've written the least of but that's fine," I said. "This won't backfire on my ability to work on or think about anything else, I'm sure," I said. 
> 
> I am not a wise man.
> 
> Warnings specific to the contents of Jon's visions this chapter, and where some of the more extreme ones are, are in the end notes.

It gets worse, of course. (It gets— _better._ Every time.) That’s the only direction these things seem to go, to the point where Jon barely articulated the idea it might be a one-off to himself before he was decisively proven wrong. The best he can do is observe, really; observe, and try to keep this from Martin, who's dealing with more than enough already.

(Watching Martin adapt -- or fail to completely -- is… difficult. Jon's not sure how to hold the _way_ it's difficult inside himself as a question, not when he can't trust his own impulses whether or not he thinks he wants to help. The best he has to offer is trying to ignore all of that, he thinks, which is not something he is good at, at all.) 

It’s not as regular as a tidal pull but the same sort of perfect inexorability, and Jon begins to get a feel for it. Not enough to stop; never enough to stop. That's never been how this works either. Just, always, enough to dread. 

This is a kind of dread that warms him, hot and thick when it pools in his gut. It makes him lightheaded, makes his sense of his body feel abruptly disorganized in ways that augment the mounting pressure-pain-suspense feeling that actually means one of the-- episodes is coming on. Gives him enough time to avoid showing this to Martin, even if barely, even if that means admitting (to himself) that he's distracted waiting for it to happen again.

Once, Jon puts to the test his intermittent thoughts of what few things he's ever known to block the Eye -- fleeting half-formed thoughts about darkness and blindness and the wrong kind of capture, that he has even successfully kept himself from Knowing more about when there's a much more exciting world to think of -- which is to say that he locks himself in the closest they’ve got to a closet. Glorified cupboard, really. What matters is being dark, is being windowless, is the fact that his hands are shaking but he leans his weight against the closed door with tingling fingers and shuts his eyes and thinks, please stop, at least a little, please, please be enough, please be enough, sliding slowly to the floor out of a lack of will to do otherwise.

He does stay aware enough -- he's getting better at that; he's not sure he wanted to -- of his own body to know that he's kneeling, the comparison to prayer so obvious as to be facile, forehead pressed against the door, mouth open on quiet rhythmic moans that shake his shoulders like he's sobbing. 

Elsewhere, there is a stranger named Isaac who _is_ sobbing, Jon Sees, trembling with it and with the tension of trying to hold his resolve a bit longer. The warm brackish water presses softly at his legs more than lapping at them, too still for such a disturbance to matter. It doesn't reach the back of his cupped hands, not yet, which is good, insofar as anything could be good, because that's where his eyes are, both of them, held with a ginger kind of horrified reverence and intact largely by luck. He knows what to try, he knows what he's going to do, and it still takes almost more effort of will than he has left in him to raise those hands to his face, to not spit or recoil when he's mouthing across his palm to find one of them, when it slips softly between his lips, when the fluid that meets his teeth is thicker than water but just as body-warm. Isaac manages, just barely, swallowing when he wants to gag, the hope of changing the cycle he can barely remember how to live outside -- that this sacrifice might be horrible enough, trading one moment of ultimate vulnerability for the future -- just barely enough to carry him through it. 

It's a good enough intuition, or it would be in another world. In this one all it means is that this time he doesn't see the ripples first before uncountable warm, almost-gentle hands rise up in the hip-deep water to drag him down.

And Jon is so _full_ with it, otherwise-inconsequential stars bursting behind his physical eyes in the dark, the hollow shell he has for a body flushed and stretched and sensitive and _filled_ beyond what he ever could have imagined just from this tease of a glimpse. There is _so much_ where that came from that he's been trying to neglect for no good reason and he knows better, he Knows better, he wants it _all_ \-- 

Jon ends up filing that one under "near misses", instead. It takes him a while to catch his breath.

So there is some level of discernment, he gathers, of association between what he’s thinking and what he does not choose to See. It paints what would be benign gestures and sensations with a promising overture of menace. He stays here — stays all in one piece, in one place — when he’s Watching Martin dream at what-would-be-night, which Jon does wish he could consider an uncomplicated good. But thinking about it the not-morning after, when Martin can’t see him worry (more), does take the memory of how his face and mind twist and shift when painted over with the sort of terror he keeps at bay awake and makes it a slippery slope to Knowing people whose loved ones have been so much less lucky, the witness not so much struggling to remember who they've lost as barely wondering if they deserved to know at all, and then… well. Brushing his palm against his own forearm becomes a visceral reminder of who’s currently shedding their skin in incomprehensible amounts of agony but with the clean languid ease of a loose old coat. The sky weeps its joy and Jon’s hands shake with the near-homesick longing that brings and—

It gets worse. (Jon was so miserable for so _long_ , all his life, before; he’s not sure what that iteration of him wouldn’t have given to get this much out of _anything_ , even— maybe even if he’d been warned the depth of feeling would be sexual. He remembers that the actual price was not his to give at all, he clings to that until it hurts enough.) It gets worse. He manages.

And it gives him enough time to avoid showing this to Martin; that is, right up until it doesn't.

* * *

“You still… Feeling it? Seeing everything?”

If he only knew. “Yes. I— I’m trying not to, but—”

* * *

It feels like an entire low-pressure system building in his skull; Jon is checking the kitchen cabinets, is trying to be systematic about it, two knuckles rapping irritatedly at each one in order to see what isn’t what it is _now_ before Martin finds out the wrong way, and… It creeps up on him slowly, fog and static and a kind of quiet weightlessness creeping up his spine, pooling around his brainstem, drifting, all abstract space and potential swelling pleasantly where the arachnoid mater ought to be. 

The sense of _premonition_ itself is cool the way Jon knows his own skin to be cool, not uncomfortable and deeply inhuman, but it buzzes lightly across his scalp, dances along his shoulders and down until his fingertips are tingling and _that_ is unnaturally warm. He doesn’t so much mistake it for something else as dismiss it for too long, until his face is flushed and he can’t quite manage keeping his mouth closed, until his breathing is high and short in his chest and the hot, deep foreboding’s sunk between his legs. 

He shuts his eyes, pauses, tries to think through the static. Damage control. This is a question of damage control. (Especially with Martin half a room over, _Christ—_ ) He can…

Perfectly clear through the static hum in his ears, in his blood, Jon hears a tape recorder turn itself on. Feels his heartbeat stuttering at it, feels uncertainty making him hyperventilate; feels himself getting wet, getting _wetter_ , slick beginning to soak into his pants. 

Hears Martin, closer than he would have expected him, say, all caution and deliberation and underlying fear, “Jon, d’you… do you know what that’s… about?”

“Martin, don’t l—” Jon says, trying for steadiness in his voice and breaking. “Don’t,” and he can’t quite finish the sentence, can’t get the verb out. He whispers, the feel of it rough in his own throat, “ _Please._ ”

(A counterintuitive sort of prayer if there ever was one, when the only thing his god would want if his god could want here would be for someone _to_ see—) 

It knocks the breath out of him and he folds forward with whatever pathetic sound must result, hands hitting the counter to hold himself up when his knees won’t almost by coincidence. His spine bows, his shoulders shake, and of course he can feel Martin’s eyes on him, of _course_ , and of course he’s transfixed in confused horror and can’t tell what exactly he’s watching quite yet.

 _Jon_ knows what he’s Watching, of course. He knows more about what he’s Watching than the person inside it, closed in on themself with fear and loss and the attempt at drowning their own further enacting of it all in rote learning; they no longer remember their own name. 

He Knows for himself how their mouth feels empty and wasteful with the tongue shorn to the base, and it disorientates them slightly more as they try to work unthinkingly, as, eyes downcast, they slip their hands back into the seam splitting their torso into an inelegant and inefficient container. They are removing their own organs, one by one, slick and sticky on their bare hands but surreally intact, the tissue firm and soft in turns as they lay each one out for inspection, kneeling. Their lips are pursed together to keep the teeth in, but that’s only a matter of time. Their movements grow sluggish, clumsy, before they’ve even made it up to the lungs, and Jon Watches them fight down an equally sluggish sense of terror for how they don’t know what that means but can know it’s nothing good, how they don’t know what this is better than but the idea of worse is hot on the back of their neck. 

They fumble like they’re losing blood, but they are not visibly bleeding. They should be bleeding, they think, dully, with a kind of not-quite-curiosity that makes Jon’s fingertips itch with the desire to press the issue. 

But he loses Sight of them before he can find out what exactly had done all of that, reeling, attention scattering like a kaleidoscope, and that bothers him— enough to make him aware of himself for a second, enough to make him _want_ before he could have stopped himself, and then he’s reeling as his body slides to the floor, breath hitching, sinking back into tense, terrible focus. Relaxing as he reaches out for more. 

A man (Leif, much more anchored in his body and his own identity, more’s his suffering for it) claws at the repulsive growths on his hands, long enough to grip and twist with terrible cracking sounds but still horribly attached. He had them even before— _Before_ , a lifetime ago, had spent that lifetime swallowing down the disgust and forcing himself by rote through doctor after blank-faced doctor until their ruthlessly insincere concern and dismissal felt plasticky and inhuman. Trying, hanging enough hope to live on that he could just keep _trying_ , down the merciless list of _getting help_ and _resources_ , doing everything right. Leif tried so, so hard to do everything right, and this is where it’s left him now: scratching and clawing at the lengths of foreign flesh, tacky with blood and stubbornly solid. 

He is working up the nerve to try the garden shears again. They glisten wickedly, blades chipped with the bursts of strength in Leif’s prior attempts but still improbably sharp, in the low light of the closest to a hiding place he has. 

Jon Watches and Knows what the man doesn’t and can’t, Watches him wrench desperately at his own perfectly ordinary fingers, the thrill of it perfectly intertwined with that vicarious agonized disgust. He’s a hollow vessel, always was meant to be, skin stretched thin and marked over ravenous potential, and that’s _good_ , that is _right_ , he will never be sated but there is world enough to fill him if he would just _take_ it—

He takes this instead, a fraction of it, takes heated arousal crackling across his skin and the fullness of the insides of his body being pushed unceremoniously out of the way of more interesting things as he writhes and feels, if at a great distance, his knees slip further apart, the strain along his inner thighs with how his body opens further. The fact that Martin— that Martin’s eyes track the motion; he just barely feels this, too. 

There is (someone, anywhere, anywhere but here) — there is (everyone, everywhere) — a woman, this time, the endless tide of his attention pivoting as it’s brought to bear on her mortal fragility. Her name used to be Supriya. Whether anyone still cares is an open question she can’t bring herself to face. _Her_ hands are shaking, too, and the liquid in the wide, shallow bowl they’re holding should suffer it but it’s too thick to splash. There’s miserable tension ratcheted tight through her whole body, the sense that she’s saving someone for whom this would be unbearable, the delusion implied in such a thing that she can bear it instead. 

Molten rock like she’s holding should burn through to her palms regardless of the container, should already be congealing, but it glows sickly as she raises the edge to her mouth and her lips and tongue do not burn. Jon feels her desperate belief this will be the end of it, even as he Sees the unnatural heat begin to build inside her, turning on itself and devouring her, rising, scorching through the skin, and he thinks…

Well, not much useful, not much in terms of actual _thought_ , really, but he at least understands it to blend together, what he Watches and what he himself feels, the agonizing all-consuming burn that he takes so much more easily than a human being, all white-hot molten roil; somehow, always, inside that snapshot of ecstasy, still, a relative peak, the moment that’s (almost) _enough_ —

A feeling like dying, like a dam breaking, and then the breathtaking shock of humiliation that brings him, on his knees, back to the present moment. He feels boneless and fucked-out and weak and used, and he feels wet and sticky and disgusted with himself, and there’s slick soaking through his trousers at the crotch and inner thigh. 

That’s never happened before, he thinks, a bit stupidly. It’s not… fair. It’s not…

“Are you…” Martin pauses, frowns, hunting for words like speech won’t make things worse; Jon tries to reel himself in, tries to make that not be the sort of thing he knows without turning his face up to him. “Are you… okay?”

“Not—” Oh, Christ, the broken breathiness of his own voice makes him cringe with hopelessness and loathing just on its own. “Not… really, no.”

“Can… can I…”

Jon breathes in and tenses — however sore and unintuitive an exercise that is — and then in a hard angry breath out shoves himself upright. (His knees aren’t stable but— since when has any of him been.) “No,” he bites out. “And I— I’m going to… go deal with… this. A-alone.”

Martin’s a column of fear and worry and building determination in Jon’s periphery such that Jon’s almost surprised he lets him go. He has enough clarity to feel sick at the prospect of that meaning real conversation instead, later; but only just.

* * *

Once he’s shut the bathroom door Jon tears his clothes off as quickly and thoughtlessly as he can manage (peels, more like, when it comes to the underwear, and — _ugh_ ), tightly-wound shaky humiliation balanced out by a post-orgasm haze he can feel in his fingertips, more desperate to rinse off than he can manage to think another minute ahead. It goes a long way toward distracting him from his personal ambivalence-at-best toward nudity, if only because he's more upset about something else. The bathroom's playing nice currently — which is just as well, given Jon's not in a great state to fight it into cooperating otherwise — and even as he considers the stereotypical merits of a cold shower he's turning the heat up as he steps in, the thought of that added concussive warmth on his wrung-out muscles too tempting to opt for damage control against the prospect of enjoying things. (It is, obligingly, hot water that falls on him, or near enough to feel nice.)

He's utterly miserable with embarrassment but it's not actually surprising that this doesn't kill any residual arousal, that the humiliated flush from his face down to his collarbones fades easily into the way his skin seems to spark and buzz suggestively with the prospect of this being not a question of satiety a mere shortcut to going _again_. He can feel his heartbeat in the panicky way, much more enthusiastic than is at all necessary, in his ears and throat as much as in his chest. But that selfsame hard rhythm is if anything more noticeable between his legs, a demanding throbbing pulse in his still-hard clit and empty cunt. 

Because this is him, apparently, it goes both ways; the beginning of physical arousal thrumming through him is enough to make Jon turn his mind expectantly toward the world outside, all reflex and interest, like a sunflower or a CCTV camera. He stands under the spray for some time he almost manages to actually lose, fighting to suppress his being turned on at all and instead thinking of the world in nebulous fits and starts: no coherent images but enough to feel a sense of potential, to know that's his mind stretching out, just casual curiosity. That Jon's doing this to himself, because he just can’t not want to. 

The water winds hotly down his thighs and Jon’s put it off enough, he thinks, trying to remind himself how disgusted he is enough to motivate and not so much that he can’t stand to touch his own skin. He turns, steps back, tries to angle his hips forward without thinking about it, and… 

Well. Cocks that up too, arousal and humiliation and profound _distraction_ coring through him together as if time’s shuddered to a stop to allow it to sink in. 

All right, fine, it should have occurred to him to not fucking take the still-hard spray of hot water directly between his legs— it’s pure physical overstimulating sensation like hammering at an open wound but _Christ_ —

He tries to stumble back and loses his balance in a perfectly normal slippery-footed way, and falls, hard, the impact of his entire weight jarring through his unfortunately bony arse. That startles him into a different brand of self-loathing; it _hurts_. Not in an extravagant way, or an interesting one. Just embarrassing, awkward, the sort of natural outcome of what Jon’s always lacked in both attention span and body fat he’s been used to fielding all his life— nostalgic, almost. He might’ve winced for days at that kind of stupid accident. It would bruise, perhaps badly. 

Jon doesn’t think it will now, though. He hasn’t done that sort of thing in quite some time. 

(At least that does tear his mind from— Natalie, then, that’s her name, he is _trying_ to think of them as people even as he’s perfectly aware identifying, humanizing data is more a greater weakness than it is anything else — Natalie, who has finally found the coldest bit of comfort possible in how she knows what to expect as the walls close in, and who, when he’d looked in on her, was just about to be surprised.)

He thinks the shocked yelp wasn’t just in his head. He thinks he’s probably lucky he didn’t bite his tongue, although someone else might find otherwise. 

He thinks he’ll stay here a minute.

Jon fumbles the water off and pulls his knees up toward his chest, staring at nothing, not quite bitter, not quite thinking that this is at least a normal human way to fail. 

Martin’s voice startles him out of it; Jon didn’t hear him approach. “Jon, are you— are you okay, I heard—”

"I'm fine," Jon says, more loudly and defensively than he intends to, electric humiliation squirming inside him, "I'm _fine_ , I just-- I fell. In the shower. That's all."

There's a long pause there. Jon pictures Martin chewing his lip, in a way he's not sure isn't accurate. It's the right kind of grasping for certainty he isn't going to get. “So,” Martin says, hesitantly, muffed through the door. “The, uh. That. Earlier. Happens every time?”

Jon thinks about not answering until the tide of shame and self-loathing reluctance carries the truth out of his mouth for him; which feels less than a minute, for current value thereof. “More or— more or less.” _More when you’re watching,_ but how on Earth could Jon tell him that? “Yes.”

“Oh.” He hears the careful not-quite-thud of Martin giving up and sitting himself down outside the door, but he’s not sure what to make of it. Nor of his tone. “That…”

“I didn't _want—_ ” Jon starts, heated voice breaking immediately into some flavor of misery.

“That’s horrible,” Martin finishes, which is. Unexpected. “Just. For you especially— um, I mean—”

Jon feels himself flush, prickly heat in his blood from hairline to half down his chest, out of sheer confused embarrassment. He hates the conversation that hesitance implies more than anything (hated, he supposes), at the best of times. 

That point also hadn’t occurred to him. (Because he’d been too busy _liking_ it, he thinks, the frictionlessly routine kind of confused loathing.) He lets Martin stutter himself quiet on it. 

Finally, Martin says instead, “I’ll… I’ll be here, I guess. If that’s— okay.”

Jon feels more than slightly hysterical. About this, about everything, as a result of being enough in his own head to do human-sized emotions and be reminded he’s never been any good at that. The fact that Martin’s acting like Jon’s a victim of what _he_ did to _everyone else_ is as surreal as the unblinking sky and more inexplicable. 

What he says is, “Yes, i-it’s— of course it’s— fine. It’s— that’s fine.” He _wants_ … Jon’s not sure if he would be able to articulate what he wants even if he could say it in the first place. More than this, certainly. 

Contact, he thinks, his skin wandering into the tacky-feeling gooseflesh stage of air-drying. He can’t ask for that. He can’t. If anything physical that feels good is potentially dangerous that’s tantamount to an ulterior motive; and it’s pathetic besides, Jon thinks, vaguely aware Martin would disapprove but alone with it anyway, that with everything else in his — does it qualify as a life, really? — he wants this badly to be held. 

Martin would, he thinks. He wouldn’t even understand why Jon’s this reluctant. It’s taking him so long to learn that even relatively benign things aren’t safe if they make something like Jon feel good that he thinks Martin might be avoiding the concept. Trying to believe there’s not a conflict of interest between them as long as he is a human being. 

Jon’s cold by the time he can bring himself to get dressed. He doesn’t like what that reminds him of, either, for all that it briefly grounds him; in himself, and in the past. 

That relative break runs out for him soon enough, anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things in visions you may wish to be aware of:
> 
>   * Eye trauma, auto-cannibalism (skip the paragraph that starts “Elsewhere,” to avoid these)
>   * Self-mutilation, body horror (multiple points)
>   * Drowning
>   * Surreal gore, delusions, severe burns (starts at “Jon knows what he’s Watching,”)
> 

> 
> This chapter is also a fill for the prompt "normalizes trans* lives" ~~on the grounds that’s the most normal thing about him at this point lbr~~ from [the Banned Together Bingo](https://bannedtogetherbingo2020.tumblr.com/), which is (at the time of my posting this) still taking signups until the 23rd of May! It is cool and good, check it out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the internalized aphobia is in this chapter. It doesn't stick in terms of Jon not getting distracted by being into the apocalypse or work in terms of changing the situation, but there's rather a lot more than I planned on originally (because I underestimated this man's self-loathing _again_. Archivist, this is still supposed to be an attempt at porn, why are you like this), so heads up.
> 
> No additional horror warnings outside the tags for this one, though, just canon-typical coercion (not of Martin). ~~You know, “Content warning: Jon is in it”.~~ Content note about sex in the end notes though.

He can feel _Martin_ as well, naturally, all the time — Jon’s resigned past the point of bitterness to finally being able to read other people’s emotions worth a damn, but he tries for hating it anyway when the awareness goes beyond line of sight, when knowing the level of misery Martin’s trying to keep out of view makes Jon shiver. 

He’s afraid beyond consolation, of course, and the knowledge that Jon would be uniquely unable to offer him anything in the way of comfort or distraction anyway is slowly sinking in. And then, every so often now, something that manages to briefly cut through fear and pain: _shame_ , guilt, a froth of vague humiliation that Jon feels more viscerally than is good for anyone. It’s a soft, mundane kind of unhappiness, which is to say that it’s become a novelty. 

Fear, even at the apocalyptic scale, comes to him in waves, but in what could be moments of peace Martin’s thoughts keep turning to self-hating embarrassment. Jon realized relatively quickly that it’s when Martin thinks of him; rather, specifically, that it’s about a way Martin (still?) _wants_ him, the one he’s tried hardest at letting go.

Jon can’t read his mind exactly, not when Martin’s in control of it, not when he’s awake; but there’s a lot to be understood from Knowing those spikes in shameful helpless guilt that hook into Jon’s attention disproportionately. From Knowing it’s about him. From that it’s easy enough — too easy — to sort through the why of it, the way Martin hates himself when a part of him reaching for escapism keeps retreading what he considers inappropriate longing that’s been suddenly refueled. That he keeps thinking, what would be awkwardly wholesome in another world, that he— that he knows what Jon looks like when he comes, now, and Martin wishes when he’s not stopping himself that he were what makes Jon feel like that, in varying degrees of would-be benign detail, until he can remind himself forcefully enough that it’s not how any part of this works. 

Martin tries so hard to hide it that it makes Jon’s heart hurt. If Jon were literally anyone— _anything_ else, he’s sure it would work. Maybe that’s why he tries to pretend he doesn’t know. 

It’s better that way, at any rate; better than Martin knowing what it looks like for Jon’s trains of thought to go similar places. He keeps thinking — spends so much of the time that he does braced for that awareness he can’t fight but drowns in and everything it implies, so much Jon’s not entirely sure he could tell the difference between sensible dread and anticipation — he keeps wondering whether it could be… something better, with Martin. Wonders whether he could remap this desire onto the person he would’ve liked to feel it for anyway. If he could teach himself to like something -- anything -- else. 

He doesn't want to inflict that on Martin for long enough to try, though. If he could even bring himself to explain his reasoning in the first place. If he could trust himself to have only the best of motives driving him, when instead if he entertains the thought for too long it turns into a different kind of wondering how good it might feel to have Martin anchor him in his body when the visions take him. Not thinking about resisting it at all but about how they might work together, sensations playing off one another. He likes the pressure of Martin's body flat against him, so much, soft and warm and solid, and the way Martin's turned out to be fine with that being all Jon asks from him, to the point where it feels like a betrayal to think of doing something else. 

But he knows the way that simultaneously anchors him and makes his skin light up, and his traitorous mind turns to speculating on how that might feel with how he knows his body jerks when those waves of pleasure and perspective core through him. Having someone to push against, making every movement unignorable, an anchor to the body he's still fundamentally watching from that he's kidding himself to think would contradict the overwhelming strength of his vision. As if in an attempt to circumscribe the Archivist getting _more_ of Jon in on that could ever help.

And then… more than that, if his mind wanders further, because for all the self-loathing tries to put a fence around his thoughts it doesn't seem to work at all in practice. Just adds an edge of novelty when he does dare to wonder if it would feel good to get Martin inside him as well, with the way Jon already feels stretched past any would-be limit by the press of data alone. How it might feel if instead Martin's hips were flush against him for having worked his cock inside Jon the way he tries to never think about, warm grounding pressure turned hard and demanding when it's being required of Jon's body from the inside out. 

Would he feel split open on Martin's dick despite, in concert with, the way the Eye's taken to filling Jon to the brim with sensation until he's felt so stretched his cunt can barely clench down on what should be nothing if he somehow managed to try? He thinks so, though; he thinks the two ways of being opened and used in mind and body would complement one another, actually. He thinks, sometimes, before he stops himself, that it seems like it would feel nice. 

He thinks: it would be _easy_ , for once, letting Martin take advantage of where Jon's sure he's not just as slick as he's noticed before but actively yielding, Martin fucking him just however it occurs to him is best as far as carving a space for himself inside Jon's body, overwhelming and more out of his hands than the visions and _new_ with it. (Delusional, that framing especially, as if he'd _want_ to, as if it isn't repulsive of Jon to be thinking like this at all -- but when his mind drifts enough for that concern to be distant he finds himself flushed and shifting his thighs together every so often all the same.) 

Once or twice he's so caught up in it as to think of his own pleasure as something that would be desirable or even possible to share, imagining… Martin's head between his legs, maybe, for how much that could leave Jon's entire body spread open for his perusal if he wanted, and because he feels like Martin's probably the kind of determined about it that would work Jon over to hot, stinging tears just on his own if Jon had ever been interested in that sort of thing. And then, _then_ he imagines balancing those physical sensations with the transcendent ones but still somehow getting enough control over his voice to be able to tell Martin what he's Seeing, so he'd know just what made Jon gasp and grind down against his mouth, getting to share at least part of it all with him--

He cracks down on those thoughts as soon as he can and only wishes it was sooner. Of course Martin wouldn't want that. Jon _knows_ Martin wouldn't want any part of that. He wants Jon, sure, in ways including sexually, and has for long enough that he can almost ignore the crawling guilt of it at this point. But this isn't _part_ of Jon for him, Martin doesn't think about him that way, and Jon should be following suit. Instead of practically taking advantage of him without his knowledge as is by imagining these things.

* * *

He’s begun to suspect, in a way that means he doesn’t need to Know to be sure, that the difficulty of it all is, at its core, Jon’s own fault, at least in the only sense that matters any more. It’s him _trying_ to ignore it that’s put him in this situation, the ability to suppress his— _visions_ as unreliable as keeping himself from taking any interesting new victims used to be, each and every breakthrough exaggerated accordingly. It could be so much more predictable. It would be easy. 

More than once Jon has found himself wondering if that would be better; if he could tune out some constant but relatively stable middle ground instead. He has never been able to do anything of use with constant interruptions, the unique intrusiveness he’s failing to cope with now aside. And he should be doing _something_. Should be doing research, somehow, is what, should be scheming himself into a position to try, because if there’s an answer to the present hellscape it’s certainly not here, and the past is closed to him by default. 

He would, he keeps thinking, take a constant quiet awareness of the horrors around him; it’s not like it’s not naturally on his mind. He could probably even stand a given amount of noticing how sensitive his mouth feels, his throat, the synonymous urge to touch or speak; the way he already knows his clit drags against the fabric of his pants when it’s even halfway hard, if he had to; even if it was constant, even if it meant putting up with knowing he was always wet and ready and wanting — though he’s not sure how much that given amount of tolerance really is — if he could just fucking _read—_

Then he gets enough of a grip on himself again to tell the difference between wanting to read and— _wanting_ to read, as it were. Enough to catch some small, awful part of him thinking about the sheer pleasure of a story already ended, in itself and then as part of the continuity of now-perfected human terror, satisfying the only need the panoramic present can’t. (Thinking, as if the segue were perfectly natural, about slipping his free hand just far enough into his trousers that he could trace slow, thoughtless circles over his clit, easy enough to begin with and then effortless as the fabric of his pants soaked through by the time he was fully hard. Just a motion he wouldn’t need to pay attention to or even think about, and the way that pleasure would build at the same pace as the narrative.) And — afterward, when he finished — the climax that would wash over him then and _only_ then, as part and parcel of the kaleidoscopic present, with finally being full, being _filled_ , in the ways that matter most. 

It would be so good. It would be _so good_. He can’t begin to imagine how it would feel, but he knows exactly _why—_

So he‘s perfectly aware he can’t trust his own judgment of what is a good idea, there. That no concession will ever be enough unless it’s all of him. (Jon’s immensely aware of that part; it’s the same choice he’s made more than once already.) He knows this isn’t working, all the time-that-isn’t, from the way just conscious mundane speculating on what’s happening to the others makes the muscles of his abdomen tense with expectation, to the visions of the world outside that overwhelm him until he’s mewling and pressing his thighs together and _crying_ with it. The way he is so, so far past the point of being able to not want this. 

It’s close enough to the only thing that he could truthfully say is on his mind.

* * *

That, and the more pertinent reason he’s started thinking about leaving. Thinking about seeing what he did to the world for himself. Even as he tells Martin not to — but it’s different. They’re different. Martin hasn’t wanted to talk to people in a long time; Martin thinks he still wants something to believe in, or he did the last time Jon checked in. And _Jon…_

He's not curious, exactly, or maybe curiosity is the entirety of what he is. Maybe this already wasn’t an emotion he could experience on a human scale years ago. It's certainly almost dully familiar to find himself itching to watch someone relive a secret, tasting the air as they realize they’d never been truly safe even as it breaks on them how much better of a past they’ve still lost forever, watching shadows cast by fear and mourning and the memory of terror play out across their face and keeping them there as long as he likes, as long as he wants. And then turning away and letting the present wash over him once more. 

Time is broken, but couldn't he fix someone fast in sequential moment after moment anyway, pulling the past over them to make the weight of the endless present impossibly worse? How much would the tone of their living nightmares shift toward what Jon alone does to people? (Well, he supposes: what he _did_. Before.) Would it let him not only stumble into but _take_ something actually new?

And then there's a seductive kind of rationalization curling around the back of his mind when he lets it: given what it’s like out there, could Jon even _do_ any meaningful damage to a single human being he hasn’t already done? It seems almost hubris to think he could make anyone’s life worse at this point. Which would make the exercise almost victimless, insofar as it produced no new victims, and…

Except of course he thinks he could make things even worse. Otherwise he wouldn’t want to do any of this. 

The prospect feels decadent, almost, thinking of taking his fill of one single person like that when he's already spoiled for choice. Of having every thing that is before him and still stopping to pull the agonizing little secrets out of what once was. Thinking of what it might mean for the victim, so fundamentally interchangeable in ways that are really relevant, to be forced into the sense of crushing perspective of individuality, of remembering both a better world and how very much that world _hurt_. Wondering what deeper, richer note of misery it might leave them with. How it might feel to wind that up and let them go and then… look in on them, after, maybe. 

But is that at all how it would work? He doesn't know, he can't _see_ , he doesn't know enough about the world as it is from here to understand how he fits into it now, he wants to go find out, he wants to leave, he wants—

They can't afford to leave, to let Jon at the actual world. They just can't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content note about sex: no actual interactive sex happens, but Jon has somewhere between intrusive thoughts and actual fantasies about (consensual, as in he's fantasizing that Martin would consent to that; no dysphoria on the subject, so, good for him) vaginal and oral sex before snapping himself out of it. 
> 
> On which note, please imagine that handshake meme but it's Martin, Jon, and "is it unethical to think about maybe wanting to have sex with your boyfriend"
> 
> (Alternately, you could join me in imagining how _utterly fed up_ Elias would be watching at this point...)
> 
> This chapter is also a fill for the BTB prompt “fantasy”.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BTB Fill Puts The “Unintentionally Sexy Cuddling” In “Sexy”

The thing about the meandering not-format of time that Jon can’t quite bring himself to face is just… it has done him so many favors. The way there’s at least this facsimile of something stable, a lack of urgency until that’s belied by the next brush with the outside, is a kindness to him (and, he knows, to him alone), one he in no way deserves. 

It means Jon, for the first time in years — for the first time in ever, maybe — he’s not… preoccupied by what he uses his time for, at least not intrinsically. There’s so much more of it where every second came from and so little left for Jon to do about it. He’s left no room in the future for guilt because it’s used up by the all-consuming crush of what he did to the past. 

He would find a way to feel worse about kissing Martin, otherwise, he expects. He would find a way to feel bad about how much he likes it. (There’s the slight brush of misery there the way there is any time Martin thinks something Jon brings to his life could be comfort; but the way Jon can make him relax, a little, the way he otherwise just can’t, with a touch to his face or his arm— it’s all the more intoxicating for its juxtapositions.) He would feel guilty about distraction, or wasting time, or the fact that a now-distantly outdated version of him would be unable to handle the uncomplicated way Martin turns out to like Jon in his lap and draped over him comfortably without angling for more. And instead Jon just— doesn’t. He likes kissing Martin and he _gets_ to.

One small good thing, he thinks. Or the closest they can manage, he amends, when reminded of what the world outside is doing to Martin even from here. Close to close enough. 

Jon likes kissing Martin, enough that he makes a catastrophic mistake about it. 

He just— he wanted to believe, is all, even more than just being something like humanly distracted. When he felt his awareness of his body reaching downward, that foreboding curl of heat in his gut, he wanted to believe it was him… being a person. For once. A person, with the kind of interest that’s supposed to go along with willingly straddling someone’s hips, chest to chest, with the normal reasons for kissing someone like that. That he’d achieved _that_ much, at last, now that it would never really matter. 

He manages to hold the concept for what once would have been a good thirty seconds, even. Until he hears that telltale click, the sound sending a fresh wave of prickling heat down his spine, and feels Martin freeze.

"Oh, no," Jon says, halfway to a moan in itself, fisting his hands in the front of Martin's shirt when he should be pulling away. "No, not-- not now, please, god--"

Martin had startled immediately and stayed tense since; his hands hover at Jon's side, like he's afraid to touch him (he is). Like he thinks he might have to pin him down (less sure of that one). “Jon? What’s wrong?”

“ _Everything,_ ” Jon whispers, voice rough with awe and baser things. He ducks his head down against Martin's neck, pressing himself close, spine curving. “Everything— Martin— _Martin—_ ” Speaking keeps him enough in his body to consider pressing his mouth to Martin’s neck for the last second he might want to shut himself up, but that’s too close to a kiss, to a boundary, to involving him altogether in the kind of thing Jon _wants_ , and by the time he’s dismissed the possibility he can’t remember why he’d have tried to muffle himself at all. He presses his closed eyes against that stretch of skin instead, feels his grip on Martin’s shirt get tighter. “Martin, there’s so much, there’s so _much_ , do you— do you w-want—” 

No, Jon thinks, no. (Yes, something sings under his sternum, say yes, please, _please…_ ) The world shifts on its axis and he settles into its overwhelming inevitability and he’s stopped, gasping, from finishing the question, his mouth too full to fit more words. 

Or maybe that’s one of them, choking, swallowing down a fear they can’t grasp or breathe, and it’s Jon who’s full with it _everywhere_ …? Muscles fluttering reflexively around nothing and such an overwhelming _abundance_ of it, Jon’s being too fundamentally insatiable to manage _too much_ or _full to bursting_ but insofar as he could he seems to be _trying_. And he’s enough aware of his body to shake and writhe in Martin’s lap, helpless to it, to it and to how his rapt attention is on every twitch and moan and shudder and he’s consumed by wordless fear, even as Jon’s transfixed by the endless unique little cycles of human hope and human agony and the utter certainty it ends in despair, as the resistance is fucked out of him again and again and there’s no room left inside him for conflict when there could be _infinitely_ more of _this_ …

He comes down from it shivering and crying, this time, hot and wet and obviously, pathetically debauched, from the tears on his face to the slick between his legs. He doesn’t have it in him to be surprised this time. He doesn’t have it in him to be _anything_. 

(It occurs to him, in the quietest, worst sort of way, that when he felt like the aftershocks could’ve gone on forever he probably wasn’t wrong.)

Even just the added friction of— well, of straddling Martin’s lap when he was caught by surprise and then couldn't hold his body still, what would be borderline painful almost-chafing in any setting, was— it felt incredible. (It feels incredible, still, or it could, if Martin pulled him down by the waist or Jon moved the right way, opened himself willing…) Which could well be the closest to an unambiguous answer Jon’s going to get, for how easy that makes it to wonder about other external stimuli, about a universe where Martin would actually want to touch him while— while he—

He stumbles up, backward, cataloguing the worry-fear-incomprehension in Martin’s eyes and the look on his face and the humiliated blush it’s overlaid on without looking up. Jon can’t meet his gaze. 

(There’s… He managed to leave a small wet spot even on _Martin’s_ jeans, which would be difficult enough to ignore even if it weren’t drawing the eye right to his cock, and that is just— reprehensible. It’s reprehensible. Jon clings to his guilt and his disgust at even the thought; of course he wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ want any of that.) 

“I’m sorry,” Jon all but squeaks, strangled by the extra reasons why, and — coward that he is — just bolts again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY
> 
> F I N A L L Y
> 
> _Why am I constitutionally incapable of taking a kinkmeme prompt and not getting into the 8-10k range why am I like this_
> 
> Your comments have kept me going and will presumably continue to tbh, bless you all so so much

**Author's Note:**

> I'm horribly slow to reply to comments a lot of the time but they always always make my day
> 
> Depending on the rest of the world the day you make may be me writing a third fic for the premise too. Or a completely different prompt fill. Who knows! The future is a glorious mystery


End file.
